Does a "good" school district mean your high school student will be successful?

By Rajkamal Rao  

Image Courtesy: Zillow

When families hunt for homes, an important consideration for at least four decades has been the reputation of the school district. In North Texas, Frisco, Plano, Coppell and Carroll ISD rank relatively high in the minds of home shoppers; Ft. Worth, HEB-ISD and Lewisville, not so high.

While there are many reasons to buy a home in a particular area (such as proximity to one's work place, shopping, ethnic neighborhoods, highways, friends, extracurricular activities for children and asset appreciation), doing so only because of the reputation of the school district may be suboptimal given the changing K-12 environment in today's public schools. That is, a good school district does not automatically translate into student success in learning, academics, and extracurricular activities.

 

But the reputation of the school does matter when it comes to college admissions, especially at the elite institutions. In a provocative article in the Atlantic, "Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene," writer Caitlin Flanagan describes all that is bad with private high schools (hyper-aggressive parents arguing about students' grades, uber-school buildings that cater to students' every need, and outrageous annual fees including some schools that charge more than $50,000/year). But she concedes that the one advantage that sets private high schools apart is that they send huge numbers of students to the most elite colleges.

Flanagan sources her information from the "Best High Schools In America" website which ranks all high schools (public and private) on a single objective measure: the number of students a high school sends to top colleges. With over 12,600 records, PolarisList says it is the largest aggregator of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT matriculation data for US high schools.

In North Texas, the following schools send the most high school students to Harvard, Princeton, and MIT (data based on graduating years 2015-18).

1. Plano ISD (all three high schools):  27 out of 4,065 students
   
2. St. Marks Academy (Private): 21 out of 86 students
3. Hockaday (Private): 16 out of 120 students
   
4. Greenhill (Private): 5 out of 120 students
5. Coppell HS: 5 out of 725
   
6. Flower Mound HS: 3 out of 856
   
7. Centennial HS (Frisco): 2 out of 548
   
8. Frisco HS: 1 out of 449
   

Flanagan's point is well made. Your odds of getting into elite institutions are much higher if students attend private schools. But not everyone can afford their high costs. For the rest of us who depend upon a public school education, Plano appears to be the best pick.
 

Attempting to frame the entire discussion on one objective measure (the number of students a high school sends to top colleges) is impractical and meaningless for most families. We want to assure them that the Texas Education Agency (TEA) is one of the the best state education departments in the country and provides hard-working students an excellent choice of colleges and careers. We hope that this post will help lower the financial stress on families trying to save or borrow extra money - simply to be able to afford a "good" school district.

Curriculum standards

In 2015, the TEA dramatically changed the curriculum standards for every public school in the state. It introduced four tracks to get students to be college-ready, and each track requires 26 credits to graduate. It introduced the idea of endorsements using which high school students could "specialize" in defined streams, such as STEM or Business & Industry.

In most cases, TEA curriculum standards exceed the requirements of even the most elite colleges. Stanford requires three years of foreign language (Language other than English) study in high school. With the DAP track, the TEA requires three years of LOTE study. With the Foundation track plus an endorsement in Arts and Humanities (available in every school district in the state), a student must take four foreign language credits, one higher than what Stanford needs. So, whether a student is in Frisco or Lewisville or East El Paso, she can easily meet the foreign language requirement if that is what she wants.

Then, there are curricula set by national and international organizations. While high school performance continues to be crucial, it is now even more important to differentiate a student's profile by taking Advanced Placement (AP) or IB courses. These are taught in school but culminate in external evaluation by the College Board or the IB Organization. Practically every school district offers AP courses, so, here too, a single school district is not decidedly superior.




Learning opportunities

One area where "good" schools historically differentiated themselves was in the learning opportunities offered to children, by offering a wide variety of electives, honors and CTE courses in school. But today, the trailing schools are not far behind, thanks to an important development: online learning.

In Texas, students from any public school district (frankly, even those who are home-schooled) can take a variety of online courses from TXVSN or UT High School. Both are fully accredited by the TEA and school districts are required to honor courses completed online. Some schools impose limits on how many online courses one can take in what year and nearly all schools do not provide weighted GPA grades for courses completed online, but prior complaints from even a few years ago that a student is completely shut out of taking a desired course because it is not offered by the school are no longer relevant.

While learning online is not for everyone, this is increasingly the path chosen at work and higher education institutions worldwide. The state of Arkansas requires high school students to complete at least one online course for credit, in recognition of this trend.

If a student is firmly opposed to taking online courses, he can always register for dual credit courses at brick and mortar institutions, like community colleges and even local universities.

What about teacher quality? This is a subjective measure and we all have our favorite and not-so-favorite teachers. But one thing that has changed the K-12 landscape is the popularity of Khan Academy, a resource available 24x7, on demand, for free. Khan Academy has largely neutralized the teaching advantage of "good" school districts.


Funding
A common argument for buying property in "good" school districts is that because of their ability to receive more funding based on higher property tax assessments, they are able to invest more for school infrastructure and operations, like paying teacher salaries.

But to a large extent, municipal bond markets have neutralized this advantage. In fewer than 6 years, HEB ISD has raised more than $500 million for school investments, all through bonds. Also, the state of Texas sends billions of dollars to disadvantaged school districts.

Competition
On the flip side, with so many high-earner and motivated families moving to wealthy school districts, competition among learners is fierce. Such a breakneck contest for that extra point on a test has resulted in high levels of stress both among students and parents. Many families engage in additional tutoring and academic practice, simply to keep up with the competition.

In some cases, competiton has veered into becoming unhealthy. Some students try to cheat or otherwise game the grading system simply to get a high enough GPA to improve class rank.

To limit unhealthy competition, starting the 2018-19 school year, Plano ISD started to not publish the weighted average GPA and class rank on report cards, until the second term of the 11th grade. This is the equivalent of a tennis chair umpire only announcing your points in a match but not disclosing the points of the player across the net. This is a terrible decision because students do like to know how they are doing when compared to their peers.

Many families have asked me this question: Is it time to get out of a "good" school district and move to one which is less competitive in which a student's class rank can potentially improve?  This is a serious question because an improved class rank at the margins could potentially earn a student automatic admission to the University of Texas. The Texas Top 10 rule does not differentiate good high schools from bad. Further, graduating from an under-represented school district could make a student's profile more appealing to top colleges.

Just think about the logic here. Families which have paid a premium to buy a home in a "good" school district years ago are now considering leaving it to go to a "bad" school district. If this logic makes sense, why buy in the wealthy district in the first place?

Class rank considerations

You need a minimum of 26 credits to graduate from a TX high school. Most students begin earning high school credits in the 8th grade.

Class rank is an important metric in TX and is computed for ALL high school classes. If you're moving to TX for the 10th grade, make sure that your destination school honors your student's earned GPA with weights. Unfortunately, most school districts will not commit to evaluating your transcript until after you move, so you must be ready to fall behind in class rank.

By state law, the class rank computation has to be finalized by the end of the 11th grade, with an update permitted after the first 9 weeks of the 12th grade. So, college admissions in the state largely rely on the 11th-grade class rank and the 12th-grade performance is practically irrelevant for most students. So, if you're moving to TX for the 10th grade, your student can only earn a fair class rank for the 10th and 11th grades, because credits earned until the beginning of 10th grade are subject to school district interpretation.

At UT Austin, 75% of the 10,000 incoming freshman seats are automatically granted to those in the top 6% percent of each high school class. No other factor is considered. If your student is not in the top 6%, he or she has to compete for the 2,500 seats in the holistic pool. Last year, there were 47,500 applications for those 2,500 seats from all over the world - resulting in a selectivity of 5.5%, no different from Harvard or Yale.


Residency considerations for in-state tuition

The 3-year rule to claim TX residency applies to those seeking an independent domicile provided the student graduates from a TX high school. Once the student establishes this domicile, he or she can continue to claim TX residency for the purpose of in-state tuition regardless of the residency or work status of their parents.

The 12-month rule applies to students who wish to claim a "dependent" domicile. To earn this, the student's parents must establish a home or work presence for at least 12 months. Once this condition is met, the student can claim in-state tuition.

There are several ways to prove residency in these situations. The rules are easiest for US Citizen and PR families but a little more complicated for those on H-1B or L-1 visas.

Takeaways

Buying a home is an extremely private decision and should remain so. But the reputation of the school district alone should not drive the home buying decision because changing K-12 trends no longer make a "good" school district essential to student success.

In fact, there's increasing evidence to the contrary.

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How we help high school seniors get into choice colleges

By Rajkamal Rao  

We will be glad to help your 12th grader (or rising 12th grader) through every step of the college admissions process.

We are honored to have helped hundreds of student clients in the United States and from around the world win admission to top colleges and universities in the U.S. For the Class of 2024, several clients reported getting interview calls from the very best schools, including MIT, Caltech, Yale, Columbia, CMU, Princeton, Penn, Brown, Cornell, CMU, and Johns Hopkins. Several students got confirmed admissions to Columbia, Cornell, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Rice, NYU, Vanderbilt, Wash U and CMU. A few got admissions to direct MD programs.

Many clients reported getting into some of the best public Ivys. UT Austin, UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, UCLA, the University of Michigan, Purdue, the University of Virginia, and the College of William and Mary repeatedly made the list. Clients also got into Texas A&M, Arizona State, the University of Washington, the University of Pittsburgh, and Virginia Tech.

We place all of our expertise online. There's a good chance that our answers to many of your questions are already available for free. We also conduct numerous low-cost webinars to educate parents and children about all things college. We publish event details on our Facebook page so, please follow us on Facebook.

We recognize that the college admissions process is complex and parents need professional advice tailored to the needs of their 12th grader. Here are the various value chain elements of our service including the various proprietary tools and decks.

1. College selection and finalization, including evaluation of ED/EA strategies. [Included: Long-form resume template, BS/MD deck for interested students].
   
   
2. Advice for H-1B families with children on H-4 visas.
   
   
3. Describing the step-by-step task plan to successfully complete a college application. [Included: College selection master tool, Campus visit questionnaire]. Our tool prompts clients to plan regular checkpoint/status calls to review progress.
   
   
4. Essay reviews for platforms such as the Common App, the Coalition App, ApplyTex, MIT Admissions, and UC Apply. We follow the same process as the top schools with two professionals reviewing your essays independently. 
   
   
5. Supplemental essay reviews.
   
   
6. Financial Aid and scholarship planning. [Included: Our comprehensive guide to college financial planning].
   
   
7. Assistance in successfully completing college applications, such as for ApplyTex and the Common App. We provide detailed pointers about how to obtain and send transcripts, recommendation letters, and SAT/ACT scores.  
   
   
8. Assistance in petitioning high school or college administrations to handle extraordinary situations, such as requesting in-state classification for tuition, credit transfer, visa issues, or other exceptions.
   
   
9. Mock interview practice. [Included: Interview questions after the practice session].
   
   
10. Deciding on which offer of admission is the best, using our structured, analytical approach.
    
    
11. Any additional support.
    

Bonus: At the end of every one-on-one counseling session, we will provide you with a summary of discussion points and a clear set of action items for future conversations. Such a summary may include links to our proprietary tools, templates or posts. This is a free service.

When it comes to pricing, we do not want to constrain parents with burdensome fixed-price all-in-one contracts because not all students need help in all the above areas. Some may need assistance only for essays, or others a combination of elements in the value-chain list.

Our fees structure follows a hybrid model - significant free advice via our popular posts on this website, Facebook page, and public seminars; a variable pay-by-the-hour counseling component, and a fixed-price offering for essay and resume reviews.

All of our counseling session pricing is by the hour. Please review our fees section. In our simple pay-by-the-drink model, you're always in control of what specific area of college admissions you want help with, how much engagement you wish to have, and how much you wish to spend.

All of our essay reviews can now be ordered from a simple menu-driven product list resembling an online store. You prepay for our service using a fixed-price model and get full buyer protection from PayPal.

 

Please check out client reviews on Google.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions. We are indebted and privileged to have earned their trust in matters which are so important to them. Please check out our public Google reviews to see what they say about us.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please  contact us for more information.

How H-1B parents with children on H-4 visas should plan for college admissions

By Rajkamal Rao  

There are many H-1B parents whose rising senior children on H-4B visas face a dilemma about how to protect their immigration status and still attend college.

There are two main questions:  What should the immigration status of the children be when they enter college? H-4B or F-1? And, what kinds of scholarships and financial aid can these children find applicable?

Immigration stages and the priority date

Which immigration status the child decides to be in largely depends upon the green card priority date of the H-1B parent.

There are three major steps to obtaining a green card.

1. The Labor Certification or PERM stage (Application for Permanent Employment Certification).
2. The Immigrant Petition (I-140) stage.
3. The Adjustment of Status (I-485) stage.

The priority date is the date on which the Labor Certification was filed with the Department of Labor, or, if no Labor Certification is required, as in the case of applicants with exceptional ability, the date on which USCIS received the I-140 petition.

The priority date is simply the reserved position in the queue to obtain a green card.

With so many H-1B employees applying for I-140s, and only about 7,900 green cards issued each year, the wait is long. Estimates are that anyone with a priority date after 2009 is in this line, those closer to 2009 at the head of the line, and those with a priority date of today at the very end of the line. Everyone in the line is considered to be in the green card backlog.

When the priority date becomes current - that is, there is a green card available for the employee and their family - H-1B families enter the I-485 stage.

When the I-485 is properly filed, USCIS will initially respond by mailing a letter that confirms receipt of the application, via Form I-797C, approximately 2-3 weeks after the I-485 filing. This is the H-1B employee's confirmation that they are officially an “adjustment of status” applicant. It takes 8-14 months after receiving the I-797 to obtain the physical green card.

What should the immigration status of the children be when they enter college?

Children of H-1B families are by default on H-4 dependent visas. These are restrictive and do not permit any meaningful activity other than going to school. Working for gain is forbidden, although, the experience of work in college (on-campus employment, teaching assistant roles, internships) is integral to the college experience. The H-4 EAD visas that permit H-1B spouses to work are not granted to children.

For students whose families are in the I-485 stage, it may be appropriate to stay on the H-4 visa and wait out the 8-14 month processing time to get the green card.

If the family is not yet at the I-485 stage, students should consider converting to an F-1 visa so that they can pursue on-campus employment and internship opportunities. However, such a move could force them to pay out-of-state tuition fees [see next section]. The decision to convert to F-1 has to balance these two conflicting priorities. In some cases (see points 2 and 3 below), converting to F-1 may be the only way that a student can legally remain in the United States.

The process to convert to F-1 is fairly straightforward. In general, you need three documents to file your I-539 - (see item #6 in the document) - the official form that USCIS requires to grant you the change of status: your I-94, the I-20 from your target institution and a financial statement to demonstrate that the cost of a year's attendance in college (tuition, fees, books, room and board) is covered. Some institutions process the so-called Change of Status for you but you still have to do the federal paperwork. 

1. Once the student sends in a deposit to a college and locks in a seat, the student should request the college to process a conversion to an F-1 visa. The University of Missouri has published an excellent checklist of the process. Rochester also has a detailed guide.
   
   
2. This conversion may be especially necessary if the H-1B parent becomes unemployed and is forced to leave the U.S when the student is in college on a H-4 visa. Job loss may even occur when the student is a rising high school senior. Luckily, U.S. law allows for high school students at public high schools to study for an entire academic year on an F-1 visa, although, the student must technically reimburse the high school for tuition expenses.
   
   
3. If a student is younger and the parent has to return to their home country, the student can still convert to an F-1 visa but switch to a private high school. Students on an F-1 visa can pursue a full secondary education – and even earn a diploma – but only at U.S. private high schools.

As long as a student is younger than 21, they can continue to appear on their parents' I-485 application and still get their green cards. As a student turns to being within 9 months of their 21st birthday and the parents haven't still obtained their green cards, the student has to find other ways to remain in the United States - convert to F-1, obtain an H-1B sponsorship - or even consider marriage to a citizen or permanent resident!

Scholarships and financial aid for H-1B children

The majority of public scholarships - such as FAFSA grants, work study, and subsidized loans - are unfortunately not available to H-1B families. Many states operate financial aid programs specifically for such families - like the State of Texas TASFA program.

But the best news for H-1B families is that children can attend public colleges and universities as in-state residents. Domicile is a technical term that colleges use to determine whether someone is resident in a state or not. The legal definition of domicile is that it is a place that a person treats as their permanent home, or lives in and has a substantial connection with. States permit H-1B families to claim domicile on the theory that these families want to immigrate to the United States and make the state their future home.

Many children of H-1B families know of no homes other than those in America. State law is fairly uniform and we will use Texas as an example. If a child is a dependent of an H-1 or L-1 parent, and if the child graduates from a Texas public high school and has attended that school for three years leading to obtaining a high school diploma, the student is automatically deemed to have earned independent domicile in the state of Texas and is eligible to be treated as in-state for the purpose of tuition. This classification remains even if the parents leave the state of Texas but still hold on to their H-1 or L-1 status.

Even if the student did not spend three years in Texas leading to a high school diploma, the student can qualify for in-state tuition - as a dependent of their parents. This assumes that the parents continue to live in Texas as their domicile - they live in a home in Texas, work in Texas, drive in Texas, and have a substantial connection to the state. The only time such dependent domicile becomes an issue is when the parents have to leave the state, say to go to California. Then, the student attending a Texas college is no longer an in-state resident for the purposes of tuition.

Students who covert to an F-1 visa will lose their in-state tuition privileges. The F-1 is a non-immigrant student visa and by definition, F-1 students are expected to return to their home countries after their studies even if the F-1 student in this case has no connections to the home country. The F-1 is NOT a dual intent visa - that is, unlike those on an H-1B visa, students on an F-1 visa are not permitted to apply for a green card directly, and therefore, cannot reasonably claim domicile in a state. USCIS rules prohibit F-1 students from attempting to gain domicile in a state for the purposes of enjoying in-state tuition benefits.

We recommend that students of H-1B families limit their school choices to state public universities and colleges.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions. We are indebted and privileged to have earned their trust in matters which are so important to them. Please check out our public Google reviews to see what they say about us.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please  contact us for more information.

Preparing for Fall 2020 Online

By Rajkamal Rao  

The Drag at the University of Texas, Austin. Photo Credit: Rao Advisors LLC

Incoming college freshmen are having to contend with one of the most consequential decisions of their college careers as they consider the Fall 2020 term. To attend a university campus? Take hybrid classes? Or go online?